


the way they were

by penguinwritesbooks



Series: Journalism Team AU [1]
Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Alex Has A Sibling (Julie and The Phantoms), Alex Has Anxiety (Julie and The Phantoms), Alex's Parents Are Homophobic (Julie and The Phantoms), Bobby Trevor Doesn't exist, First Kiss, Fluff, Luke and Julie are only mentioned but they're around, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Protective Reggie (Julie and The Phantoms), Reggie is bi but it's not talked about but He Is and that's important to me, Reggie is the loml and we need to treat him better, but not like explicitly, so is kayla, they just suck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:55:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27492307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penguinwritesbooks/pseuds/penguinwritesbooks
Summary: Alex hadn't decided yet if he wanted things to go back to the way they were before everything had gone wrong. The house was quiet, dust settled into the corners of the stairs and floating lazily through the sunlight streaming through the kitchen windows. He wanted so badly to see his parents there again, making coffee and scrambled eggs. He wanted to see his sister sitting at the counter, trying in vain to finish her chemistry assignments.He wanted the good back; the morning chatter and flour fights, but he couldn't tell if it was worth it. He missed his sister more than anything, but he wasn't entirely sure he'd survive if he turned back now.So he didn't.
Relationships: Alex & Reggie (Julie and The Phantoms), Alex/Willie (Julie and The Phantoms)
Series: Journalism Team AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2074326
Comments: 10
Kudos: 181





	the way they were

Alex hadn't decided yet if he wanted things to go back to the way they were before everything had gone wrong. The house was quiet, dust settled into the corners of the stairs and floating lazily through the sunlight streaming through the kitchen windows. He wanted so badly to see his parents there again, making coffee and scrambled eggs. He wanted to see his sister sitting at the counter, trying in vain to finish her chemistry assignments.

He wanted the good back; the morning chatter and flour fights, but he couldn't tell if it was worth it. He missed his sister more than anything, but he wasn't entirely sure he'd survive if he turned back now.

So he didn't.

He'd woken with the sun that morning, creeping downstairs and out the front door without a second glance. His drums had long since taken refuge in Sunset Curve's rehearsal space, and he didn't see any reason to bring much of anything from home with him. Everything that reminded him of himself was at the garage or hidden in Luke and Reggie's bedrooms.

He wasn't entirely sure where he was going now. He hadn't told Luke or Reggie about what had happened, he hadn't even come out to them beforehand.

It wasn't like he planned to tell his parents the way he did, it just sort of happened. One minute he was pushing his fork through mashed potatoes and listening to his dad talk about his day at work, and the next he was being stared down by his family. He had no idea what exactly he said, just that it wasn't the right thing.

There wasn't any yelling or shattered plates like he'd imagined, it was just suffocatingly quiet. At their father's pointed gesture, Ruby silently left the table with a sympathetic glance over her shoulder to Alex, leaving behind her plate of cold broccoli and chicken.

Part of him had wished she'd stayed there with him, or even just took the time to wash her dishes before leaving. Most of him was glad she wasn't there to hear their parents explain in stony, careful voices that he was never to speak of this again, especially not around Ruby. They said she was just 'too young,' but she was only two years younger than him. Later, he'd laugh to himself at the idea of a magic age to learn about gay people, but at the time, it just felt like an insult. For days afterward, he put up with the new rules his parents put in place.

No seeing the band. No listening to rock music. No leaving the house after sundown. No leaving the house before school. No more staying late to work on the school paper. No more going to football games to get pictures unless he brought Ruby with him. No more trips to the library to study - he could study at home, they said.

He got away with telling Luke and Reggie that he had a big AP Stats test coming up and his parents were making him stay home to study. It wasn't _technically_ a lie, because he did have a stats midterm that he was getting ready for. The only problem was that he had no idea what to say after midterms were over.

And then there was the problem of the paper. His editors weren't happy about having to reassign his game nights to other people, or about him skipping out on work nights. He could get away with it for a few weeks, but he couldn't imagine he'd be allowed to keep his status as page designer if he didn't start showing his face in the news lab more often.

He'd seen the look Willie, the sports editor, gave him the day before when he'd claimed he had to go to his sister's piano recital that night and therefore didn't have time to go over the layout with him. Ruby didn't play piano, but Willie had let it slide and promised not to say anything, as long as Alex promised to help with the front page before the paper went out at the end of the month.

So, naturally, he decided it would be best to leave home. He figured his parents would be relieved, and crossed his fingers that Ruby wouldn't be angry with him.

He ended up at Reggie's house, not quite ready to tell Luke yet, doing his best not to fall out of the tree that led to the roof under Reggie's bedroom window. After a few attempts (all of which ended in him squealing and holding onto the tree for dear life), he found himself crouched outside his window, struggling not to lose his balance as his backpack pulled him backward. Praying the shingles under him wouldn't come loose, he knocked against the window with what he hoped would be enough force to wake Reggie without alerting his parents.

His first try went unnoticed, and he almost just turned and left. Then again, 'turn and leave' included the prospect of climbing back down that tree. And tree climbing was really more of a Luke thing. Alex has always preferred knocking on the front door like a normal person, but Luke insisted it was 'more fun' to almost commit property destruction in the process of scaling the trellis outside Alex's window.

He knocked a little harder the second time, greeted with a thump and the sound of Reggie's feet padding across his carpet.

“Dude.” He pushed open the window, glaring at Alex. “Did you wake up today and think 'Hey, you know what would be fun? Making Reggie think someone was about to kill him!' or was that just a coincidence?”

“Hey, man,” Alex said, moving to rub the back of his neck, only to almost tumble off Reggie's roof.

“Just- get in here,” he pulled Alex forward, resulting in both of them losing their balance and ending up sprawled across the floor. “It's too early for this.”

“I know, man. I'm sorry,” he replied, helping Reggie up. He was wearing what he had presumably slept in: a t-shirt so faded Alex couldn't quite make out what band's logo was on the front and a pair of fuzzy reindeer pajama pants. In March.

“It is a Saturday and I should be asleep,” Reggie huffed, flopping back down (face-first) onto his bed.

“Oh my God, _hush_ ,” Alex whispered. “You're gonna wake up your parents!”

“What? No, they're in like, Wyoming, or one of those nowhere states that don’t really exist.” Alex stared at him blankly.

“We’ll circle back to the ‘don’t even exist’ thing. You mean to tell me I could have just walked in through the front door this whole time?”

“Yeah, man. That's what happens when you climb onto my roof before exploring all your options.”

“Well, I wasn't just gonna waltz into your house if your parents were here!”

“But they're not.”

“But they could have been!”

“No, they have an accounting-person-conference-thing today.”

“I didn't know that!”

“Why else would they be out of town?”

“I didn't- You never told me they were going out of town,” Alex said, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Well, you're the one who's been skipping band practice for your statista- static- your graph class test,” Reggie said.

“Do you even know what 'statistics' means?”

“Yeah, bro. It's like... numbers and stuff.” Alex looked at him incredulously for a moment.

“I mean, you're not _wrong_.”

“Exactly,” Reggie said, clearly very proud of himself. “So do you wanna tell me what you were doing on my roof at 7 in the morning?”

“Honestly? Not particularly.” Alex sat down next to him on his bed, looking down at his shoes. Reggie seemed content to sit in silence until he was ready to talk. “It's been... a very long week.”

“I can tell,” he said, pointing at the bags under Alex's eyes. "It's been weird without you at the garage.”

“Trust me, it's been weird to stay home.”

“At least tell me all the studying has paid off and you can come back to practice soon,” Reggie begged. “We're both too afraid to touch your drums, so we've just been playing without a beat. It's bad.”

“Yeah, I'd kill you both if you screwed with my kit,” Alex said, nodding with a little smile on his face. “But no, not really. I kinda lied to you guys.”

Reggie immediately turned to face him, taken aback. The guys had _never_ lied to each other. Even when Reggie accidentally snapped one of Luke's guitar strings. Even when Luke had accidentally dyed Alex's favorite hoodie pink, not realizing it had gotten into his laundry basket at some point. They never lied, it just wasn't like them. Reggie had paid to replace his string and Alex kept wearing the pink hoodie, finding that he liked it even better now. It didn't make sense for them to not tell the truth, seeing as their issues always seemed to sort themselves out after a day or two.

“What do you mean you lied to us?" he asked, incredulous.

“I haven't _actually_ been studying for the test this whole time. Well, I have, but that's not why I've been skipping practice.” Reggie just stared at him. “I- my parents told me I couldn't see you guys anymore- but it's not just you! I'm also not allowed to stay after school to work on the paper or go to games if I don't take Ruby.”

“I don't get it,” Reggie said. “Your grades are fine, right?”

“Yeah, I just..." he paused, waiting for Reggie to say something, but he just raised an eyebrow and waited for Alex to keep going. "I'm gay. And they... weren't happy about that.”

“Oh.”

“Oh? That's it?”

“Well, I don't really know what to say. I feel like I should have seen this coming or something.”

“No, that was kind of the whole point. I didn't _want_ you to see it coming.”

“Right. Yeah, that makes sense. Does anyone else know?” Alex shook his head.

“Just my parents and Ruby.”

“And me.”

“And you,” he amended. “So you're okay with it?”

“Obviously, why wouldn't I be?”

“I don't know,” Alex said with a shrug. “Because we spend a lot of time together?”

“Yeah, and? I spend a lot of time with Julie From English Class, and she likes guys, too.”

“Oh, well... A lot of people just don’t think of it like that, Reg.”

“Then how _do_ they think of it?”

“Like I spend all my time in English checking guys out, but Julie spends hers reading Shakespeare.”

“Well that’s a hypocritical dichotomy,” Reggie said. He delivered the statement with such confidence that Alex almost didn’t recognize him for a moment. “Th-that’s what those words mean, right?”

“Actually, yeah. Since when do you know how to use the word ‘dichotomy’ in a sentence?”

“Since Tuesday!” Reggie exclaimed with a sunny grin. “I was looking for you in the news lab and no one was there so I was gonna leave but then one of your stories was on the wall so obviously I had to read that. But then I felt like it’d be mean to only read your stories, so I had to read all the other stories on the wall. And then I got stuck on some opinion thing that girl Kayla wrote about ‘cultural relatableism’-”

“Relativism.”

“Right. So I was trying to read it and then someone came in to put a camera back and he saw me and explained the words to me. He was really nice, but I can’t remember his name. It was like... Billy? Wally?”

“Willie!” Alex exclaimed, face lighting up.

“Yes! That was it! Willie.”

“Yeah, he’s really nice. I love him.” Reggie blinked at him until he processed what had just come out of his mouth. “-Like as a person! I love... who he is. As a person. He’s nice, you know? And I love nice people. I love niceness in general, really. Nice cats are cool, too! Not just people. And nice raccoons, and various nice reptiles. I love that he’s nice. I’m not, like, _in love with him_ or anything. He’s just, uh, nice.” Alex laughed nervously.

“You’re totally in love with him, bro,” Reggie said. Alex almost panicked and had his mouth halfway open to defend himself, when he smiled brightly. “That’s so cool, dude. You two would be good together!”

“You think so?” he asked, blushing.

“Yeah, man. He seems chill, and you’re... not.”

“I can’t tell if that was an insult.”

“It wasn’t! You’re just a very nervous person.”

“Well things seem to like to go wrong for me, so I’d say I’m valid in that respect.” Reggie nodded solemnly.

“Right. So what are you gonna do?”

“Uh, I was probably gonna crash in the garage for a while. I haven’t really figured all that out yet.”

“You can stay here until next Sunday,” Reggie offered. “My parents won’t be home until Monday. After that, I don’t know. I can ask.”

“I mean, are you sure? I don’t want to be in your way.”

“We have a guest room for a reason, bro.” Alex was very familiar with the Turners’ guest room. Reggie’s parents insisted that Alex and Luke stay there on school nights, so he’d spent countless hours sleeping under the heavy yellow comforter he’d come to love. Plenty of his clothes had ended up folded in the dresser, and he was pretty sure one of the pillows in the window seat was his.

“If you’re sure.” Reggie nodded resolutely.

“So you’re coming to the garage today?”

“That’s the plan. I’ve got to get into the school first, though.”

“You’re going to school? On a Saturday?”

“I’ve been kinda falling through on the next issue’s layout, and Willie said he needed my help with the sports section and front page.” He ignored the pointed look Reggie gave him. “I’ve got a key to the doors off the jock lot, so I’m gonna try and get it done today and surprise him on Monday.”

“Someone’s in love,” Reggie sang, following Alex out of his room and down the stairs.

“I will literally _pay you_ to shut up, Reg.”

“...How much?”

“Like, five bucks?”

“Nah, I’d rather keep my freedom.” Alex shook his head, taking a bite out of one of the apples sitting in a basket on the counter.

“Whatever man, just don’t bring it up around anyone else- especially Luke- until I get the chance to tell them.” Reggie nodded, miming a zipper over his lips.

“Your secret’s safe with me,” he said. Alex paused just before opening the door, turning around to loop his arms around Reggie’s neck and pull him into a hug.

“Thank you, man,” he mumbled into his shoulder. Reggie froze for a second before wrapping his arms around Alex and squeezing him tightly.

“I don’t know what you’re thanking me for,” he admitted, prompting Alex to laugh from where he was tucked against Reggie’s shoulder. “But you’re welcome.”

⚞╠╬╬╣⚟

Alex had always loved being in the school when no one else was there. The only light in the hallways came from the morning sun, the squeak of his old shoes against shiny linoleum echoed through the building, and the lab was completely silent as he flipped on the lights.

He set to work on the April issue, grimacing at the sloppy layout as he looked over the sports section. It looked like a much messier replica of a paper they’d put out the year before, which happened to be displayed on the wall. While students probably wouldn’t notice the repeat design, he figured they’d find great joy in making fun of the rushed, immature work. It was a struggle to get kids to read the papers that earned them a win at nationals, let alone sections that looked like they’d been put together by a sleepwalking toddler. Scrapping most of the section, he sighed and started re-formatting the stories and graphics.

“Careful there, Hotdog. You’re gonna make me think you’re avoiding me.” Alex whirled around to find Willie leaning in the doorway.

“I don’t like that nickname,” he said, regaining his composure.

“Hey, it’s a fun story!”

“You do realize I almost died, right?”

“Yeah, but you _didn’t._ That’s the fun part.” He leaned over Alex’s shoulder, looking down at the incomplete pages he’d been working on. “That bad, huh?”

“Did _you_ do this?” he asked.

“No, I was working on it before the game last night, ran out of time, and had a reporter take over.” He sat down next to Alex, smiling brightly. “I regret that decision.”

“You should! It was just a worse version of a layout we’ve already done!” Alex exclaimed.

“Yeah...” Willie said sheepishly. “In my defense, I _was_ coming to fix it. You beat me to the punch.” 

“Well, it is my job. Did you think I’d just leave you hanging?” Willie raised an eyebrow.

“With the way you’ve been acting lately? Yeah, kinda.” Alex blushed, looking down at his lap. “What was that all about?”

“It’s kind of a long story,” he said.

“I don’t have anywhere to be.”

“Right...”

“I mean, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. You just kinda had us worried there for a bit- me, I guess. You had _me_ worried.”

“Oh,” Alex said dumbly. “Yeah, I’m- I’m gay.”

“Yeah?” Willie asked. The smile on his face was enough encouragement for Alex to nod.

“Yeah, and my parents weren’t particularly excited about it when I told them. I wasn’t allowed to work on the paper after school or go to games without Ruby or see my friends,” he explained.

“Luke and Reggie, right?”

“Yeah! You know them?”

“I know the three of you are attached at the hip,” Willie chuckled. “They both come looking in here for you sometimes.”

“Right! Yeah, Reggie told me you taught him what a dichotomy is?” Willie nodded. “Well, I thought someone possessed him this morning when he used the phrase ‘hypocritical dichotomy’ in a sentence that made sense both syntactically _and_ semantically, so thanks for that.”

“He really loves you, man. Wouldn’t stop talking about how much he missed you at band practice? I didn’t know you were in a band.”

“Sunset Curve, yeah! And I really love him, too. He’s a really good guy.”

“Are you two...?” Willie asked slowly.

“Reggie and me? Oh God no,” Alex said, laughing. “He’s pretty much my brother. When we were younger, he spent so much time at my house that I’m pretty sure Ruby _actually_ thought we were related.”

“Oh, okay. Sorry, I just thought... I don’t know what I thought.” He laughed awkwardly, fiddling with the rings on his left hand.

“Uh, yeah, I’m actually more interested in... someone else.” Waiting for him to react, Alex couldn’t decide whether or not to regret saying that.

“Please don’t kill me,” Willie whispered, leaning forward slightly.

“Why would I-” Alex was cut off by Willie cupping his chin in his hands and kissing him. He forgot to close his eyes for a few seconds, before surging forward to wrap his arms around Willie’s neck.

Alex decided then and there that he quite liked kissing Willie. It was warm and careful and nothing like he’d assumed it’d be. Willie was leaned out of his chair toward him, just barely avoiding falling onto the floor as they pulled apart.

“Thank you,” Alex said after a moment.

“You’re welcome?” Willie laughed, letting Alex take one of his hands and absentmindedly play with his rings. “So what happened with your parents?” he asked. “Did they have a change of heart or something?”

“Not really,” Alex said, shaking his head. “I just kinda... left.”

“What?” Willie asked, immediately concerned. “Where are you gonna stay? Do you need to crash at my place for a few-”

“Willie, it’s fine. I’m staying with Reggie for now,” Alex said with a smile, squeezing Willie’s hand.

“Right. I probably should have seen that coming.”

“And people call _me_ the anxious one,” Alex giggled.

“Hush, it’s my job to worry about my boyfriend.”

“...What?” Alex asked blankly. “Am I your... Are you my boyfriend?”

“I was under the impression that I was,” Willie said. “-But if you don’t want to be, that’s fine too! It’s up to you, really-”

“Willie. I’d love to be your boyfriend,” he responded. “As long as you’re mine, too.” Willie grinned, leaning forward to kiss him on the nose.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

On second thought, Alex was pretty good with things the way they were.


End file.
